The murderer who wielded the power of Wither had kept taking detours after leaving the crime scene to prevent anyone from tracking them. Thus, after entering the Lower District, Shade and the three women got out of the carriage again, slipped into the alleys, and continued the pursuit on foot.
Even after the victim's blood had been granted Life Force anew, tracing back the Echo it had left behind in spacetime was far from easy. Shade had to observe carefully all along the way. Sometimes the blood traces in spacetime would abruptly break off, forcing him to search in different directions before finding them again.
Fortunately, as the sunset gradually faded and night arrived, not only was Shade's Thaumaturgy enhanced, but that streak of red in the darkness also became much clearer than it had been at dusk.
At around seven o'clock on Sunday night, the four of them actually returned from the Lower District to the Outer City District and arrived near the Arcadia City Sewage Treatment Plant.
Like the morgue, the Arcadia City Sewage Treatment Plant had been built beside a tributary channel of the Thornir River. The factory covered roughly one hundred acres and served millions of residents across the Arcadia Region. It was the most advanced Sewage Treatment Plant of its era, containing a semi-automated sewage processing system centered around steam power.
When the Old Continent Industrial Expo had been selecting a site in Arcadia, this place had been one of the three candidates, alongside Candlekeep Library and Oakham Park.
Vast open-air settling ponds, sludge drying yards, lime reaction pools, brick pump houses, and networks of pipes operated day and night without pause. At night, however, only a few Night Watchmen patrolled the Sewage Treatment Plant, and lighting was limited to the main entrance and the